As the final court of appeal in the UK for civil cases, the Supreme Court is a powerful institution. Positioning yourself as a Supreme Court commentator will build and enhance your reputation with peers, clients and the media as someone who understands the most important legal disputes.

In 2009 I was a litigation reporter at The Lawyer responsible for covering the opening of the Supreme Court. Previously the UK’s top justices sat as the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords. The move from the House of Lords into a purpose-built court on Parliament Square was intended to emphasize the independence of the judiciary, increasing the transparency between Parliament and the Supreme Court.

While working on The Lawyer newsdesk it was not uncommon for partners to complain to me that the press release they had spent weeks perfecting was not featured in the news. Getting noticed by the legal press is a challenge, so how do you stand out from the crowd?

But calling a journalist to complain is not going to help your cause. I have worked with many reporters who, after receiving an aggressive call from a lawyer demanding that their release be published, simply stopped looking at any future news from the firm whether it merited attention or not.

Instead, it is worthwhile looking at how you might do things differently and better the next time round.

After the 2008 economic crash, London became a hotspot for wealthy international litigants attracted by its world-class legal profession. The litigation boom powered forward London as a disputes centre.

Why 2019 will be a pivotal year for lawtech companies with legal trade press

The coming year will present an opportunity for legal tech companies to build their profile and credibility through the legal trade press and awards,  particularly now as mot law firms have firmly realised they need to keep investing in making technology work for the profession.

As we discussed on the recent Kelso webinar for lawtech firms (click here to register for the next one), private practice firms are under pressure from clients to invest in technology

There is no doubt winning one of the credible legal industry awards can be wonderful for boosting staff morale while also raising your law firm’s reputation.

While larger firms gain armfuls of them each year, for smaller and regional firms, as well as suppliers to law firms, they are a huge credibility statement too – demonstrating that the work they do is every bit as notable as their larger counterparts.

As well as awards for private practice and in-house legal departments, there are gongs for legal suppliers and support ranging from legal tech companies to HR managers.

While legal technology developments would once have been dismissed as ‘boring’ by the legal press, it is now starting to gain traction as firms start embracing new technologies. For legal PRs this is a challenging situation: a story that might have been rejected because there wasn’t enough interest is now rejected because there is too much such news!

How do you ensure your legal technology news is making your firm stand out from the crowd and delivering the right message to the right audience? 

It’s results season in the legal profession, that time of year when firms make it clear just how well (or not) they have performed over the last twelve months. Across the profession, lawyers will be watching to see how their competitors have fared in comparison with their own firms.

For many in law firm management, however, headline figures are a part of a broader story that they are wanting to tell. The challenge is how to communicate that story and give an accurate picture of the firm’s wider development without giving away trade secrets.

Dealing with the legal press needn’t be difficult: just have something interesting to say

It is no exaggeration to say that in my time on The Lawyer news desk I dealt with hundreds of PRs and many thousands of press releases. Filtering the good, the bad and the ugly was a daily chore.  Only the chosen few would succeed in grabbing my attention and, just perhaps, end up being published as a story on TheLawyer.com. 

Over the years I developed strong relations with PRs and the firms they represented. Yet there were times that dealing with a press team could be frustrating. 
Answering 15 calls on the same irrelevant subject in the space of two hours was tedious, my ears would become deaf to it. 

PR advisors Kelso Consulting are hosting a series of seminars and webinars for law firms on a range of business development, public relations, social media and thought leadership issues in the first half of 2018. 

We'd like to invite you do join us at them!

Particular aimed at law firm owner-CEOs, together with sales and marketing directors, we will be hosting our seminars in London and, for Thames Valley businesses, in Newbury. For those that can't make them, we will also be doing them as webinars.

For law firms looking to add oomph and impact into their thought leadership

Members of the Kelso team have been working with law firms on thought leadership since before the term was used (20+ years!), so we've seen and solved a fair few problems in our time, many of them recurring ones!

One of the questions I frequently get asked is "which is best, retainer or project when working with a PR agency?"

Both and neither! It all depends what you want the agency to do.  So, as Harry Hill used to say on his TV Burp! there's only one way to sort it out... fight!

This "must read" legal exchange on the Taylor Swift alt-right ding-dong is most illuminating

It is very rare that letters from lawyers enter the "must read" category, so it is not lightly that I recommend the retort to Taylor Swift's expensive law firm Venable LLP from the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union).

Law firms' legal directory questions answered by former Chambers editor

As Christmas edges closer, many businesses will be winding down hoping for a merry end to the year. By contrast for many in law firms this is instead a stressful period as the deadline for legal directory submissions looms.

Some firms have mastered the process of legal submissions.  Their forms are filled out like clockwork, quickly and efficiently keeping their rankings, and nudging them up wherever possible. But for other law firms, it is a complex process where huge effort and angst is spent... often to little 

benefit.

Gauging marketing's Return on Investment is fundamental for law firm growth and management

Many of the law firms we meet struggle to know whether the amount of time and money they spend on marketing is producing an effective return.

It is a common problem, but it needn't be this way.

By contrast, many B2B businesses have good metrics and a clear idea of the effectiveness or otherwise of their marketing spend.

Law firm mergers - making them work

Over the years I've observed many mergers at law and other professional firms.

Some have been stunningly successful, some have been failures and many somewhere in between.

Clearly they were all intended to be huge successes, but something went wrong for many.  What was it?

Well, I'm not an M&A expert but my observation is that those that went wrong had two things in common.

In a few weeks time I'll be on a panel at the Law Firm Marketing Summit, discussing how to measure the return of investment for Thought Leadership activities.

It sounds an esoteric subject and immediately begs some specific questions like:"What is Thought Leadership?"; "What resources are being invested and how do I cost such inputs as non-billable time?"; and "What actually is the return I am looking for and how will I know when I achieve it?".

It's easy to start over-complicating things, so the key question lawyers and their marketing teams involved in Thought Leadership projects should be asking are:

While Twitter and Facebook encourage strangers to become connected, LinkedIn is all about relationships. However almost daily I am contacted by strangers who are merrily ignoring the rules set down by LinkedIn that state you should only connect with people you know.

The strength in LinkedIn for lawyers is the relationships between people who connect with one another. It allows for recommendations and referrals that simply cannot happen between complete strangers.

In the LinkedIn jungle such predatory stranger invites from the so-called ‘LIONS’, or LinkedIn Open Networkers, who chase numbers rather than relationships. Others simply do not know any better and of course LinkedIn makes it hypocritically easy to connect with strangers too.

Making the right impression when you want to build rapport with someone is vital, not least in business. Ever heard the saying: ‘you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression’?

Yet on the social media channel that means business LinkedIn the majority of introductions are abrupt and use the standard ‘I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn’. This undermines a potential relationship from the outset.

If you have ever been on Twitter you will have spotted those anonymous eggs that denote profiles that have not added a photograph and often flags a complete novice or worse a spam account. On Facebook the silhouette makes you suspicious and on LinkedIn, where it really matters, no photo means no business!

When I see the anonymous head and shoulders silhouette on LinkedIn it usually means it is a profile that lacks any attention and however professional the person is, you cannot help but make a judgement about a lack of attention to detail.

Picking the right photograph is important too! On Facebook a recent profile photo has me skydiving somewhere

Thought leadership success for lawyers

Ensuring your thought leadership campaign has success "built in" from the start

Our recent article in Professional Marketing magazine covers nine common signs that a law firm's thought leadership campaign is doomed to fail from its early stages.  It is based on our experience of delivering dozens of such campaigns (including picking up three awards along the way).

Do you have your ‘Company Website’ displayed on LinkedIn, literally? The default setting for the link with your contact info is to your company web address and at first glance this makes sense.

In fact the Contact Info button – just below your number of connections on LinkedIn, is where your connections can easily discover your email, Skype address and telephone number. Other information includes being able to list up to three web addresses, include your ‘Company Website’

It means nothing and no one searches for ‘Company Website’on LinkedIn any more than they do the web’s most popular hyperlink text of ‘click here’ on Google –which means nothing either! To be fair it does mean your company web address, but in an ideal world you would have more attractive language linking to your web collateral.

What does your headline say on LinkedIn? If it simple declares you to be a ‘Lawyer’, ‘Owner’ or ‘Managing Director’ then you are missing a major trick on LinkedIn; you should be using this to promote the difference you can make to clients!

Your headline is the text that appears immediately beneath your name and is a key part to getting you found on LinkedIn and driving people to engage. Equally it is your chance to appear dull and uninteresting – so get it right and use best practice for your headline on LinkedIn.

Did you binge over Christmas? No, we don’t mean third helpings of turkey or a bloat of mince pies (it should be the collective noun!). Did you gorge yourself on Netflix? Have you seen House of Cards? Or did you finally see Breaking Bad? How about Orange is the New Black?

With over three million users in the UK subscribing to Netflix for unfettered access to so many TV series and movies there is a good chance you have spent some time over the Christmas break streaming.